Package tracking is an integral part of a package delivery service that allows a customer to track goods that they have shipped or that have been shipped to them. The advent of the Internet has allowed commercial carriers such as the United Parcel Service (UPS) to make it possible for customers to track their shipments online using a web-based service. Some businesses have taken package tracking a step further and integrated the package tracking functionality into their internal business systems. Businesses thus have the ability to trigger business events based upon shipment status information received from a commercial carrier.
For the most part, package tracking services known in the art operate on an package by package basis and require that a customer query a carrier database with a package tracking number associated with the package to be tracked. As a result, it is difficult for a company with a heavy volume of inbound or outbound shipping to track all its packages currently in transit. Companies are often stuck with the burdensome task of individually tracking large numbers of packages or risk being surprised when an abnormally large number of packages arrives at its loading docks with insufficient help to dispatch it. The inbound tracking of packages is especially difficult as consignees often do not have ready access to the tracking numbers that are assigned to packages shipped to them. An unsatisfied need therefore exists in the industry for inbound package tracking methods and systems that overcomes this and other problems.
Inbound package tracking, that is, the ability to forecast what packages will be delivered to a particular location on a particular day can be especially valuable to businesses. If a business knows which packages are scheduled to arrive at which locations for a given day, that information can improve the inventory management and planning of the business, allow it to sell goods that are in transit from a vendor or a supplier, allow for the efficient allocation of production and receiving staff based on incoming shipment volume, and reduce the time spent tracking individual packages.
Several methods have been used by commercial carriers in an attempt to provide inbound package tracking information services. UPS offers a service known as Quantum View to those customers who want inbound visibility package tracking but who do not want to track packages on an individual basis. To use the Quantum View service, consignees identify one or more locations for which they want inbound visibility and assign a unique identifier, known as a Location Identifier (LID) to each identified location. The consignee then provides the LID to each of the vendors and suppliers that ship to the locations and instructs the vendors and suppliers to include the LID in the package detail information anytime that they ship a package to one of the identified locations (one shipper shipping to 15 different locations for consignee “XYZ” must change its shipping system to generate 15 different LIDs, as each LID is a unique to each consignee location). When UPS receives a package from one of these vendors or suppliers, UPS captures the LID from the electronic package manifest detail information that accompanies the shipment and uses the LID to identify that package as bound for a particular location. Using forecasting and delivery tables and methods that are well known in the art, UPS can forecast when the package will arrive at its destination and update a database of packages bound for the location. In this way, UPS provides a database to its customer that identifies the packages that are bound to a particular location and estimates the date of delivery for each inbound package.
This approach to inbound visibility tracking requires that the shipper include a LID in the package detail for each package shipped to the consignee. Vendors often use off-the-shelf shipping systems and may not be able to readily modify their shipping systems to accommodate a consignee's request that a LID be added to the package detail for packages bound to a consignee location, or the vendor may simply refuse the consignee request. Further, even assuming that a consignee can persuade its most frequently used vendors and suppliers to modify their shipping systems to use LIDs, the system captures only those packages shipped from these identified vendors and suppliers; packages that are inbound to the consignee from other shippers are not captured by the system. A need therefore exists for an inbound package tracking system that tracks packages without requiring a special identifier that marks the package for inbound tracking.
An unsatisfied need therefore exists in the industry for inbound package tracking methods and systems that overcome the above-identified and other problems.